Why I relentlessly Attack President Trump

Up until recently, I have been a virtual no-show on social media. Lately, however, I have posted on Facebook quite a bit with the majority of my posts consisting of a continuous attack against President Trump and his administration. Had there been no pandemic crisis, I would have done this anyway given it is an election year, but the pandemic has made it even more necessary to the well-being of my own psyche, that I do this. My relentless attacks against the President and his administration have annoyed some friends and family. I thought I would provide everyone with an explanation and do so in the form of a blog post. Yes, I know very few ever read my blog posts, but my belief is that a voice in the darkness is better than no voice at all.

There is a quotation people use often, but rarely actually put into practice. It reads:  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  I do not know definitively whether George Santayana is responsible for this pearl of wisdom, but there can be no doubt that it is one of the most important pearls of wisdom we have.

History shows us repeatedly that republics and democracies evolve into dictatorships when two factors occur at the same time. The first factor is when the society has deep divisions which go untended for a long period of time. The second factor is when a crisis occurs which causes those divisions or fault lines, if you will, to fracture and disintegrate the republic or democracy. For the sake of brevity, I will simply refer to the government as a democracy even though technically a republic and a democracy are not always the same thing. We have seen this happen over and over. The various Greek city states of antiquity disintegrated into tyranny many times. The Roman Republic, populated by a citizenry which took pride in the fact that they expelled their original kings, and would never tolerate a new king, evolved into an empire ruled by an emperor with absolute power. In modern times, we have the Weimar Republic disintegrating into the Third Reich, one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes in the entirety of world history.

The Roman Republic had four major fault lines which went untended for a long period of time. These were:

·         A political divide between two rival political factions which became worse and worse over time.

·         The divisions between slaves and freemen.

·         The division between Rome and the Italian states.

·         The inability of Rome to pay its army which led to dissatisfaction of the army against the political establishment. This led to divisions among the army itself.

Rome faced several crises beginning with a foreign invasion repelled only after Gaius Marius was given unprecedented powers by the government and ending when rival generals took over factions of the Roman army and navy and warred against each other. The result was an emperor.

In Germany, there were two main fault lines. You had the extremely poor, and the extremely well off, and you also had a political divide between three rival parties:  National Socialists (the Nazi party), the Communists, and those who believed in the Weimar Republic. The crisis which disintegrated the Weimar Republic was hyperinflation the magnitude of which we have not seen since until we saw it in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. I think we have all seen the old footage of Germans with shopping carts full of Deutsche marks buying a loaf of bread.

Currently, the United States has three massive fault lines which have gone untended for many years now. These fault lines are:

·         The racial divide

·         The economic divide

·         The political divide

Racial tension has always been with us, but it has become more and more pronounced as the years go by. I won’t describe this in great detail, but every American knows this is the case.  The current pandemic crisis has shown that African Americans are more likely to die because a chronic lack of access to healthcare means they have more pre-existing health issues which makes them more vulnerable to the virus. On the other side, you have people in the USA who are sick and tired of people screaming racism every time something doesn’t go their way, and so on.  In general minorities have the worst jobs, the worst schools, and the worst treatment by law enforcement. The other side says communities predominantly populated by minorities have the worst crime.

With respect to the economic divide, the current administration points to the bull market prior to the pandemic and the creation of many new jobs which Trump has brought back to the United States due to his tough stance against China and other foreign powers.  And yet anyone who really thinks about these things knows that the unemployment rate statistic is about as meaningless a statistic as you can get. It’s not entirely meaningless, but it is close.  That is, of course, my opinion. As I invest quite a bit in shares, I glance at the unemployment rate then proceed to ignore it. For me, underemployment is the better economic indicator and when you look at the number of Americans who live from pay check to pay check, and the number of Americans who cannot actually stay above the poverty line from pay check to pay check, when you see the number of Americans with little or no health care, no  paid sick leave, and no hope of climbing out of their economic hole, we see a gap between rich and poor that has become wider and wider over time.  This has resulted in calls for more welfare on one side, and resentment at the amount of welfare on the other.

The political divide needs no explanation. President Trump is probably the most divisive President in US history though one could argue Lyndon Johnson was way up there too. Republicans and Democrats are fighting like never before and even the media is fractured in a way it has never been fractured before.

And along comes COVID-19, the worst crisis to hit the world since World War II.  Thus, it is we have the two ingredients which have historically led to the disintegration of democracies into dictatorships. Many Americans might say: “That will never happen to us.”  To those of you who feel this way, I refer you to the above quote. Forget the past, and you will repeat the past. This is as true as 1 + 1 = 2 and history has demonstrated that this is not just a belief, but an axiom of humanity.

When Donald Trump was running for office, I woke up from my social media torpor to warn anyone who would listen – and admittedly there are not many – that Donald Trump would precipitate a constitutional crisis. And now, three years later, he has done just that. Within the last few days, President Trump has threatened to do two things which clearly violate the constitution of the United States of America. These are:

·         President Trump claims to have total authority in an emergency to overrule the states with regard to whether they remain locked down or open up. He claims the President has “total authority.” This clearly contradicts the 10^th amendment of the Constitution.

·         President Trump has threatened to adjourn congress so he can get his various nominees appointed. He can only do this with an adjourned congress by taken on what the constitution clearly assigns to congress. It is congress which has the right to approve his nominations for various positions unless the congress, by law, gives over some rights to the President. In addition, Article II Section 3 of the Constitution says explicitly that the President can only adjourn congress if both houses disagree on when to adjourn. There is no other reason that the President can force congress to adjourn.

These threats and claims by the current President would be laughable, were it not for the fact he is commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States. He also controls the massive Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

When President Trump took office, he swore to defend not himself, not his party, but he swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies both foreign and domestic. This is what he swore. We are now faced with a President who has, within the last few days, launched two domestic attacks against the Constitution of the United States himself. In doing so, he has violated his oath of office and should be removed for doing so. Like many tyrants and dictators before him, our President is using a national emergency to reach for powers which our democracy, our republic actually, does not allow him to have. He is exploiting the fault lines in our society to form a base of power which supports him in this attack against the Constitution.

This must not be allowed to continue! Will our President order the military to enforce his reach of power? Our President has, in effect, threatened to dissolve congress. Hitler did the same thing to the parliament of his time. When we talk about Julius Caesar, Adolph Hitler, or Hosni Mubarak (whom I actually met and had a conversation with once), not to mention Mussolini, they all have one thing in common. Under cover of a national emergency, they took advantage of the fault lines in their societies and seized power that the democracies did not grant them, thereby ending the democracy.

The Republic of the United States of America has not disintegrated yet, but it is threatened as it has never been threatened before. When its own President, elected by the people without the popular vote, is the source of the threat against its Constitution, the republic is in trouble.

This is why I will not stop or relent until the threat has passed. Hopefully, the threat will pass. I may annoy some, but that will not stop me. A voice crying in the darkness is better than no voice at all. I am fortunate in that I am not a lone voice. Voices across America are crying out. If my small voice helps stave off this threat, then I will consider myself fortunate and blessed. Although I live in Australia, I do not forget the country in which I was born and raised, and to which I still hold citizenship. Men and Women of the United States, it is now time to awaken. Since our President will not defend the Constitution as he swore to do, but insists upon attacking it, it is we the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense – in this case against COVID-19, and promote the general welfare which must awaken and do what our President has failed to do. It is time for us to defend our Constitution and our Republic. May God help us in this enterprise.